Gender and Peace - Cambridge University Press

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Gender and Peace
Intermarriage Between Four Communes
in the March of Ancona in 1306
Didier Lett
On February 18, 1306 in the Communal Palace of Macerata, a concordia was
signed in the presence of two papal legates between the city of Camerino and
three neighboring quasi-città1: Matelica, San Severino, and Fabriano.2 To secure
the peace, the treaty contained a number of very specific clauses, including those
imposing a series of marriages between inhabitants of these four communes.
By the authority and the power [to act], for the good of peace and concord between the
said parties and in the province of the March, and for the safekeeping of the said peace,
concord, and friendship, we wish, order, decree, establish, recommend, and require, upon
pain of the aforementioned punishment, that in eight days the commune of Camerino
choose and delegate four, six or eight wise and upstanding men of the city Camerino, and
This article was translated from the French by Katharine Throssell and edited by Angela
Krieger and Stephen Sawyer.
1. The concept was forged by Giorgio Chittolini to designate communes that do not
have the status of papal cities but which have equal or superior demographic, economic,
and political weight. See Giorgio Chittolini, “‘Quasi-città.’ Borghi e terre in area lombarda nel tardo medioevo,” Società e storia 47 (1990): 3-26, reprinted in Giorgio Chittolini,
Città, comunità e feudi nell’Italia centro-settentrionale (secoli XIV-XVI) (Milan: Unicopli,
1996), 85-104.
2. Archivio Storico Comunale di Matelica, Pergamena, no. 838; text mentioned in Camillo
Acquacotta, Lapidi e documenti alle memorie di Matelica (Ancona: Baluffi, 1838), 1:111 and
published (abridged) in ibid. (1839) doc. 100, 2:181-90. The parchment is included in the
inventory by Giulio Grimaldi, Archivio Storico Comunale di Matelica, Indice delle pergamene,
no. 838, p. 281.
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Annales HSS, 67, no. 3 (July-September 2012): 453–79.
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that each of the said communes of San Severino, Fabriano, and Matelica choose within
the same period the same number, and that each of the said lands of Camerino, Fabriano,
San Severino, and Matelica, jointly with each father in these different lands, give to those
that they delegate for these different lands, full and general power to negotiate, decide, and
carry out the betrothals and marriages as per below; and also, if necessary and if it
appears opportune to the said noble men who have been delegated, [to be able] to partially
or wholly provide the women entering into betrothal and marriage, with the financial
gains of these said lands. The noble men must order and undertake the marriage of forty
women of the city of Camerino (of which some will come from the best families, others
from middling families, and the remainder from the rest of the city) into the castrum of
San Severino, twenty into that of Matelica, and ten into that of Fabriano. Vice versa,
forty women of the best, middling, and lowest families from the fort of San Severino,
twenty from that of Matelica, and ten from that of Fabriano will be married into the city
of Camerino. One third of these marriages must occur within the next two months, another
third in the two months that follow, and the remainder in the two months that follow
these four months. Those who take a wife from the town of Camerino will be considered
citizens of that city, and those who receive a wife from the lands of Fabriano, San Severino,
and Matelica will be considered castellani of the lands from which their wives originate.3
Here is an original instance of collective intermarriage, at the level not of family
groups but of neighboring towns. It is not so much the union of a man and a woman
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3. “Item auctoritate et potestate predictis pro bono pacis et concordie inter dictas partes
et in provincia Marchie, et pro conservatione dicte pacis, concordie et ami / citie, volumus,
ordinamus, declaramus, deffinimus, precipimus et mandamus quod commune Camerini
eligat et deputet quatuor, sex vel octo probos et sapientes homines civitatis Camerini
infra octo dies et quelibet ex dictis communautiis Sancti Severini, Fabriani et Mathelice
infra dictum terminum deputet totidem et quelibet ex dictis terris Camerini, Fabriani,
Sancti Severini et Mathelice in comuni et etiam singulares persone dictarum terrarum
patresfamilias dent plenam, generalem et liberam potestatem illis quos duxerint deputandos pro singulis terris predictis trac / tandi, ordinandi et faciendi sponsalia et matrimonia infrascripta. Et etiam si opus fuerit et predictis probis viris deputandis visum fuerit
expedire de bonis terrarum predictarum de quibus assumentur mulieres sponsalia vel
matrimonium contrahentes in totum vel in / partem dotandi easdem. Per predictos
autem probos viros ad hec deputatos procuretur effectualiter et ordinetur quod de civitate Camerini maritentur quadraginta mulieres, quarum alique sint de majoribus, alique
de mediocribus et alique de aliis dicte civitatis in castro Sancti Severini / et viginti in
castro Mathelice et decem in castro Fabriani. Et vice versa, quadraginta mulieres de
majoribus, mediocribus et inferioribus castri Sancti Severini et viginti de castro Mathelice
et decem de castro Fabriani maritentur in dicta civitate Camerini. Et / de dictis matrimoniis compleatur et fiat tertia pars infra duos menses proximos, altera vero tertia
pers infra alios duos menses tunc sequentes et alia tertia pars infra alios duos menses
post dictos quatuor menses immédiate sequentes. Illi autem qui accipient in uxores
mulieres / civitatis Camerini sint et reputentur cives predicte civitatis et illi de dicta
civitate Camerini qui recipient in uxores mulieres dictarum terrarum Fabriani, Sancti
Severini et Mathelice sint et reputentur castellani illius terre, de qua originem uxor
acceperit eorumdem.” Grimaldi, Archivio Storico Comunale di Matelica, no. 838, published
in part in Acquacotta, Lapidi e documenti 2:184-85.
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from formerly enemy communes that is meant to produce peace here but rather
the fact that a socially representative sample of 140 men were to become brothersin-law through the transfer of 140 women.4 The papal delegates who produced
this remarkable document, which was validated by the communal elites, thus
attempted to impose a form of peace whereby marriage was more than a simple
exchange. The number of people involved as well as the goal of including the entire
social body make this type of matrimonial union reminiscent of (without being the
same as) Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of “organic fusion.” Lévi-Strauss elaborated
this notion in a study of the exchanges between two groups of Nambikwara, inhabitants of central Mato Grosso, whom he observed for nearly a year (1938-1939). He
writes: “They had decided to merge by deciding that all the children of one group
would be automatically betrothed to all the children of the other group, which
would, in several years ensure the organic fusion of the two groups ... As a result
of the specific kinship system of the Nambikwara ... the fact that the children were
promised to each other transformed all the men in the two groups into ‘brothersin-law’ and all the women in the two groups into ‘sisters,’ at least theoretically.
Henceforth, the two groups became one.”5
However, the document that will be studied here is rather unusual, since it
presents an isolated example amongst all the documented rituals of reconciliation
in communal Italy. Furthermore, this clause, like the rest of this very precise and
particular reconciliation program was never applied. Indeed, the treaty failed to
put an end to hostilities, which immediately resumed in the days following the
promulgation of this text (particularly between Camerino and Matelica). Thus,
none of these marriages was ever celebrated. Historians confronted with this situation should not limit themselves to the analysis of the structures and prescriptions
of rituals. Instead, they may describe the event as “a unique actualization of a
general phenomenon, a contingent realization of the cultural pattern”6—one made
all the more contingent because peace was never obtained. In the years preceding
the signature of this concordia,7 other treaties were signed in order to end or attempt
4. Analyzing Pierre-Paul Rubens’s painting, L’enlèvement des filles de Leucippe, completed
between 1615 and 1618, Margaret Caroll demonstrated that the union of a man and
woman from enemy clans does not in itself lead to peace. The latter is instead the result
of the fact that men become brothers by exchanging women. See Margaret D. Caroll,
“The Erotics of Absolutism: Rubens and the Mystification of Sexual Violence,”
Représentations 25 (1989): 3-30.
5. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “La politique étrangère d’une société primitive,” Politique étrangère 14-2 (1949): 146.
6. See Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985),
vii.
7. Although both of these terms (pax and concordia) were used by the writer to describe
the text studied here, I have chosen to use the term concordia, or “peace treaty” in
English. The term pax refers to peace as well as calm and tranquility (also on a personal
level), whereas concordia only refers to calm established between several elements and
denotes a community of feeling, union, and harmony. See Anna Osbat, “‘È il perdonar
magnanima vendetta,’ I pacificatori tra bene comune e amor di Dio,” Ricerche di storia
sociale e religiosa 53 (1998): 125. Of the two ancient divinities referred to by Ovid and
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to end conflicts between communes in this region.8 On January 28, 1306, three
weeks before the peace treaty, another concordia was produced by the same two
papal legates in the Communal Palace of Macerata to attempt to resolve the differences between Fermo and San Ginesio.9 These texts offer few points of comparison
with the concordia in question. The January 28, 1306 text contains prescriptions
that are less abundant and original than the rituals in the concordia initially evoked
in this essay: the sharing of a kiss of peace (osculum), the liberation of prisoners, and
the banning of fortifications and delimiting of lands. How can these exceptional,
extraordinary, and even absurd instructions be described then? Who amongst those
present at the signing of the concordia on February 18 really believed that these
carefully planned intermarriages would take place before the end of the year 1306,
in a context still wrought with tension between Camerino and its three enemy
quasi-città? Did papal rhetoric, with its depiction of an idyllic society characterized
by peace and fraternity, overtake everything in its path? Did communal elites,
conscious of the utopian nature of the project, simply consent in order to “have
peace?” Why were such original and meticulously detailed rituals planned, apparently for nothing? Perhaps it is necessary to consider that the social impact lies in
the production of the text itself. The uniqueness of this document is also key to
understanding the fact that it does not reveal so much as construct the social within
a specific context.
The excerpt from the text concerning intermarriages mobilizes men and
women who were socially very different and part of a complex network of relations.
Moreover, these men and women were living in four communes under specific,
different, and fluctuating legislation (jus proprium), which attempted to define what
constitutes a foreigner or a citizen and which under normal circumstances laid out
rules for organizing the transfer of dowry following marital unions. The prescriptions laid out in this document were not exempt from the social relations in which
they were situated. These contextual details make it necessary to shift one’s
anthropological gaze from the symbolic structures to the dynamics of interaction
in order to observe—as that is the ultimate focus of this article—both how the
“gender distinction” was understood during a particular period and in a particular
historical, relational, and documentary context as well as how a gender regime is
established. The latter may be understood on a number of levels: first, through an
analysis of the roles assigned by elite males to all the women of the community
in the reconciliation rituals; second, through the study of marriage, which represented a figure of peace on a small scale; third, by looking at the framework put
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Cicero, Pax and Concordia, the oldest is Concordia who personifies the political union
of citizens and the affection between relations, especially between husbands and wives.
8. Amongst those that have been preserved, one can cite the peace between Macerata
and Ancona (1269), Macerata and Montecassiano (1272), Macerata and Montolmo (today
Corridonia; 1272) or between Macerata and Montemilone (today Pollenza; 1277).
See Dante Cecchi, “Sull’istituto della Pax dalle costituzioni Egidiane agli inizi del
secolo XIX nella Marca di Ancona,” Studi maceratesi 3 (1968): 128.
9. Text published in Giuseppe Colucci, Della Antichità Picene (Fermo: 1786-1797), anastatic reproduction (Ripatransone: 1999): 19:LXXIII-LXXIX.
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in place to ensure the transfer of dowries; and finally, by examining citizenship.
The women were required to be mediators: they had to promote peace in their
households so that it could then spread throughout the entire community, and they
had to confer citizenship on their husbands in order for the men to maintain their
dominant position.
Like the rest of the peace treaty, the organization of intermarriages does not
reveal a hidden order in which gender differences were permanently inscribed
but instead sought to produce relations between the principal actors of the four
communities concerned and assigned different roles to the men and women living
there. Thus, the gender analysis I am proposing here is part of a pragmatic approach
that includes all the questions raised by a more strictly documentary analysis while
neglecting none of the other forms of domination and social differentiation. This
is why, keeping as close to the sources as possible, I will begin by describing the
document, which is unique both in its materiality and content, as a point of departure for the observation of the gender regime. I shall then discuss the question of
the symbolic and social meaning of these intermarriages as metaphors of peace,
while focusing on the roles that the men attributed to the women. Finally, delving
as deeply as possible into the ethnographic details of these rituals, I shall demonstrate how these men organized the transfer of wives, dowries, and citizenship.
The Documentary, Political, and Social Context
A Composite Rotulus
Given that the study of gender regimes is, like that of all social practices, dependent
on documentary practices, it is first necessary to examine the documentation so as
not to confuse discursive practices and social relations (which, in this instance,
involve gender). The document of interest here is conserved in the communal
archives of Matelica.10 It is part of a collection containing a range of documents,
mostly attestations of acquittals from appeals made to the rector of the Marche,
either for individual cases (for example, homicides) or more often on behalf of the
commune of Matelica represented by a government administrator.11 The documentary environment of the text studied here enables us to partly understand the reasons
for its conservation. Among the acts immediately prior to the concordia is the
pardon (act implemented in the Palace of Macerata) accorded to the commune
10. No other copy was preserved in the three other communes concerned by the treaty.
However, a copy exists in the Vatican archives and is partially published in Ludwig
Schütte, Vatikanische Aktenstücke zur Italienischen Legation des Duranti und Pilifort, d. J.
1305-1306 (Leobschütz: Drück von W. Witke, 1909), 29-32.
11. It is thus possible to observe how an appeal before the rector by a commune in the
Marche really functioned. In these acts, at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of
the fourteenth centuries, one can also consult the number of mills purchased by the
commune, lists of taxpayers per neighborhood, etc. See Grimaldi, Archivio Storico Comunale di Matelica, 254-87.
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on March 26, 1304 by Rambaldo, rector of the March of Ancona and Count of
Treviso, for leaguing with Fabriano and San Severino against Camerino (the Liga
Comunantiarum12). There is also a call for condemnation dated June 20, 1305, from
the commune to the rector, which accuses Matelica of bringing aid to Fermo against
San Ginesio and having hindered Esanatoglia and Camerino. Next, there are copies
(dated April 9, 1306) of two papal bulls fulminated on August 18, 1305, against all
the officers, communes, and nobles of Tuscany, the March of Ancona, Romagna, and
the Duchy of Spoleto in order to aid the actions of Guillaume Durand and Pelfort
de Rabastens, the two papal legates charged by the Pope with re-establishing peace
in the region, or at least imposing a peace treaty.13 Finally, there are two other appeals
from the commune addressed this time directly to the Pope, dated December 9,
1305, and implemented in the palace of Macerata. The first is an appeal against a
condemnation pronounced by the general criminal magistrate to the same Rambaldo
against Matelica, accused of having perpetrated violent acts with men of Fabriano
and San Severino against Esanatoglia. The second is an appeal against the condemnation pronounced by the rector for having provided military aid to the Count
Speranza da Montefeltro against the city of Fano.14 Immediately following the
concordia is an act dated March 29, 1306, in which the representative of Camerino
refuses to recognize the right of the two papal legates to decide matters concerning
the castra (particularly that of Santa Maria in Monte), which according to him
belong to Camerino. Another act, probably also dated March 29, 1306, states that
the two papal legates announced that they are obliged to leave the region to
deliver the reports of their legation to the Pope ultra montes, but they confirm the
concordia signed a month earlier and redefine the confines and possessions of the
castra between Camerino, San Severino and Matelica—a decision against which
the government administrator of Camerino appealed immediately.15 Through this
brief enumeration of the documentary environment of the text studied here, one
can see why the commune would have conserved this series of acts so preciously;
they demonstrate both their good behavior towards the papacy and indirectly provide insurance against the possibility of appeals against Camerino.
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12. After 1312, this league was referred to as the Liga Amicorum terrarum Marchiae. See
Virginio Villani, Signori e comuni nel medioevo marchigiano. Il Conti di Buscareto (Ancona:
Deputazione di storia patria per le Marche, 1992), 59-62.
13. Guillaume VI Durand (Bishop of Mende from 1296 until his death in 1330) was the
nephew of Guillaume V Durand, the author of Rationale divinorum officiorum. During
the summer of 1305, Pope Clement V had already given him, along with Pelfort de
Rabastens, a mandate to intervene in favor of the Ghibellines besieged in Pistoia by
the Guelphs (without success). Pelfort de Rabastens, Abbot of Lombez, became Bishop
of Pamiers from 1312 to 1317, was made Cardinal by Pope John XXII in 1320, and died
around 1330. On Guillaume Durand, see Philippe Maurice, Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae –
Diocèse de Mende (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), note 129.
14. Acts 820, 829, 831, 835, and 836 respectively, in Grimaldi, Archivio Storico Comunale
di Matelica, 278-81.
15. Acts 840 and 841 respectively. Ibid., 281-82, partially published in Acquacotta, Lapidi
e documenti, nos. 101 and 102, pp. 190-99.
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The document in which the concordia appears is the longest and most meticulously written of the whole collection. It takes the form of a rotulus of approximately
54 centimeters wide by 316 centimeters long, made up of five pieces of parchment
sewn together (four that are approximately 70 centimeters and one that is 36 centimeters long). The two notaries who wrote the act drew their respective signum four
times on either side of each join in the parchment, one on the left and one on the
right. This document is composed of a long text of the concordia, which occupies
nearly three quarters of the text, followed by copies of two papal bulls issued by
Pope Clement V the year before announcing the arrival of the two papal legates.
The first of these bulls was addressed to the clerks and the second to the two
legates the Bishop of Mende Guillaume Durand and Pelfort de Rabastens, abbot
of Lombez. When they arrived in the Marche, these men convened a parliament
in Montolmo (today Corridonia, southeast of Macerata) on January 15, 1306, in
order to implement peace treaties in the region.16 On the rotulus are also the acts
addressed to the government administrators of the respective communes17 as well
as the validation and signatures of the notaries. The concordia was “acta, data et
recitata ... in palatio communis” in Macerata, the seat of the rector of the March of
Ancona since 1278—neutral in the conflict but above all a symbol of papal power in
the Marches. During the implementation of the act the two papal legates, Rambaldo,
Frederic the Bishop of Recanati,18 Gabriele de Pazienti, rector in spiritualibus, and
many probi hominess of the four communes were all present.
The clauses of the treaty often begin with a legitimizing statement, such as
“For the good of peace and concord between the said parties and in the province
of the March” or “For the preservation of peace, concord and friendship.” War and
peace are recurring themes in the discourses of communal Italy.19 Military glory
16. See Lodovico Zdekauer, Gli atti del Parlamento di Montolmo del 25 gennaio 1306
(Rome: Tipografia della R. Academia dei Lincei, 1915); Lodovico Zdekauer “Magistrature e Consigli nei Comuni Marchigiani agli inizi del Trecento,” Atti e memorie della
R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Marche series III, vol. II, 1916-1917, pp. 221-57.
See also Dante Cecchi, Il Parlamento e la Congregazione provinciale della Marca di Ancona
(Milan: Giuffrè, 1965).
17. The government administrators included magister Francesco di Crisco for Camerino
(February 10, 1306), Branchitto di Andrea for San Severino (January 23, 1306), Cicco
di Villano di Tebaldo for Fabriano (January 21, 1306), and magister Matteo di magister
Giunta for Matelica (January 22, 1306).
18. Nineteen years later, Frederic was one of the two commissioners mandated by Pope
John XXII to prepare the canonization of Nicolas de Tolentino in 1325. See Didier
Lett, Un procès de canonisation au Moyen Âge. Essai d’histoire sociale. Nicolas de Tolentino,
1325 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008), 126-28.
19. For an initial overview, see Alessandro Barbero, “Il castello, il comune, il campanile.
Attitudini militari e mestiere delle armi in un paese diviso,” in Storia d’Italia. Annali,
vol. 18, Guerra e pace, ed. Walter Barberis (Turin: G. Einaudi, 2002), 47-69. For summaries of the medieval period, see: Thomas Renna “The Idea of Peace in the West,
500-1500,” The Journal of Medieval History 6-3 (June 1980): 143-68; Kiril Petkov, The Kiss
of Peace: Ritual, Self, and Society in the High and Late Medieval West (Boston: Brill, 2003).
On the close social links between peace and war or, rather, reconciliation and penance
at the end of the Middle Ages and in the modern era, see: Ottavia Niccoli, “Rinuncia,
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was obligatory for laudes urbis,20 but wisdom, justice, and an ability to maintain
peace were also required for good governance. This rhetoric of peace was central
in the papal letters, in which the Pope presented these interventions in the Marches
(or elsewhere) as part of a desire to return to pax, quies or tranquillitas. As the
representative of God on Earth, the Pope was the archetypal princeps pacis.21 In
the papal letters, his legates, who were an extension of his pacifying action, are
occasionally designated as “angels of peace.”
Reconciliation Through Ritual
The clause dealing with intermarriages thus only occupies a few lines within a
composite document. It is equally important to situate this clause within the framework of an ensemble of recommendations that can only be understood as a unit.
I would now like to turn to the clauses in the order in which they appear in the text.
Firstly, the ambassadors of each commune, present in Macerata (government
administrator, prosecutors, podesta, and vicars) had to give each other a kiss of
peace, which was the first act of reconciliation.22 Then all the inhabitants (cives,
castellani, and habitatores of the four communes)—exclusively men (mares) between
the ages of 18 and 70—had to swear an oath on the Bible before the representatives
of the four communes indicating that they would respect the peace. This oath
(juramentum or sacramentum) was to be renewed every three years and had to first
be sworn in Camerino in the presence of the ambassadors and government administrators of the other communes, then in Fabriano, San Severino, and Matelica in
the presence of the ambassadors and government administrators of the episcopal
city. The text of the concordia then specifies that, upon paying a fine of 100 pounds,
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pace, perdono. Rituali di pacificazione nella prima età moderna,” Studi storici 40-1 (1999):
219-61; Marco Bellabarba, “Pace pubblica e pace privata: linguaggi e istituzioni processuali nell’Italia moderna,” in Criminalità e giustizia in Germania e in Italia: pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo Medioevo ed età moderna, eds. Marco Bellabarba et al.
(Bologne: Il Mulino, 2001), 189-213; and Osbat, “È il perdonar magnanima vendetta,”
121-46. A general study over the long term of the notions of pax and concordia in the
March of Ancona is provided by Cecchi, “Sull’istituto della pax,” 103-61.
20. Gina Fasoli, “La coscienza civica nelle ‘laudes civitatum,’” in La coscienza cittadina
nei comuni italiani del Duecento, Atti del XI Convegno del Centro di Studi Sulla Spiritualità
Medievale (Todi: Academia tudertina, 1972), 11-44.
21. See Nicolas Offenstadt, “Le pape et la paix,” in Faire la paix au Moyen Âge. Discours
et gestes de paix pendant la guerre de Cent Ans (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2007), 77-83. Pope
Clement VI’s Tertia vita, for example, qualified him as the “dispenser of harmony
(concordie sator),” “in love with peace (pacis amator)” or “source of friendship (amicitie
fomes).”
22. Many of these elites were present at the parliament in Montolmo the month before
on January 15, 1306. In addition to the government administrators of each commune,
there were, for Camerino, Brodario de Sassoferrato, Captain of the People, Berardo de
Varano, and other representatives of the episcopal town (the most damaged part of the
parchment); for San Severino, Rainaldo da Castiglione d’Arezzo, juris peritus and vicar
of the podesta; for Fabriano, Tommaso da Labro, podesta; for Matelica, Giacomo da
Acquapendente, juris peritus and vicar of the podesta.
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all persons writing or dictating a will must oblige their heirs to respect the clauses
of the treaty. It was then decided that, within a three-day period, all those who
possessed banners or arms with the signum of the former enemy commune, which
were won during past battles, should remove them from all public spaces where
they were previously kept or displayed. All ostentatious signs of conflict and anything likely to humiliate the other parties had to be removed. All signs of previous
discord had to be erased from the communal memory and forgotten, as “peace is
found in silence and forgetting.”23
The clause relative to intermarriage follows these initial prescriptions. Next
are found measures aiming to establish equality of integration and exclusion (the
latter being the opposite of citizenship, just as war is the opposite of peace) between
the communes. Within eight days, the statutes of the four communes had to record
the permanent exemption from taxes and tolls for “citizens” (castellani) in the three
quasi-città trading in the Varanos’ episcopal city and its surrounding area “as though
they were citizens of Camerino,” and, vice versa, the inhabitants of Camerino were
also exempt as though they were castellani of the three other communes.24 It goes
on to stipulate that he who committed a crime against an inhabitant of a formerly
enemy commune would incur double the punishment than if the crime had been
committed against one of his fellow citizens. One must remember that in most of
the communal statutes of the region, a foreigner often had to pay a fine twice as
large as what a citizen would pay for the same crime. While a citizen was twice
as protected as a foreigner under “normal” circumstances, in peacetime it was
the foreigner who was twice as protected. The text also stipulates that those who
were banished for treason, homicide or capital offences in one city could not be
welcomed in the other three communes and that all the banishments that had
been previously pronounced because of war, and “in hatred of the Guelph and
Ghibelline factions” (the only time in the text where these categories are used),
were to be annulled within eight days. The concordia additionally required that all
those detaining prisoners captured during the war should bring them to Macerata
the following Wednesday (February 23), where they would be liberated. The officer of the Bishop was then asked to remind the four towns, at the diocesan synod,
not to violate the peace treaty under penalty of excommunication, the government
administrators and representatives of the four towns were asked to give their accord
and to approve the signed articles within eight days. Finally, the text restates
the rights of each commune in the different localities of its contado, and, in order
23. Offenstadt, Faire la paix, 49.
24. Even though none of these four statutes bears the trace of this instruction, one can
observe the ability of the statuti of Italian communes to quickly integrate contextual
elements. This suggests that statutory texts, centered on local usage and deeply anchored
in a specific territory, were not a rigid norm and instead provided a way of studying
practices. As Paolo Cammarosano writes: “Chi analizza un testo statutario deve quindi
cercare in prima istanza di ricostruirne la posizione e la dinamica nel tempo, la relazione
con le altre componenti del quadro istituzionale, l’articolazione in un sistema di relazioni
territoriali.” See Paolo Cammarosano, Italia medievale. Struttura e geografia delle fonti scritte
(Rome: La Nuova Italia scientifica, 1991; repr. 2000), 156.
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to avoid the perpetual conflicts of delimitation of these areas, the papal envoys
reserved the right to determine the limits of each of these communities.25 If a
commune did not respect all of the clauses of the concordia, it ran the risk of
incurring a fine of 50,000 silver marks, excommunication, and proscription.
This treaty thus illustrates the wealth of medieval reconciliation rituals and
demonstrates that there indeed existed a considerably varied “grammar of peace
gestures” that provided a stock of customary rites from which participants drew
during ritual performance.
The Contextualization of an Event
Having described the document and the event, the “context” may now be introduced: “this hypothetical reservoir of ordered representations,” which does not
exist prior to practices and does not provide them with an a priori meaning.26 The
four localities concerned by this treaty are situated in the March of Ancona, one
of the six provinces of the Papal States. In the last decades of the thirteenth century,
war between the communes was still latent and, in some cases, officially declared.27
Camerino was an episcopal city belonging to the Guelph faction and controlled
by the Varano family, who were by tradition loyal to the Pope.28 The other three
462
25. In particular, the city of Camerino was required to return the Santa Maria castle,
seized in 1293, to the Matelicans.
26. For a warning against the reification of context, see Alban Bensa, “De la microhistoire vers une anthropologie critique,” in Jeux d’échelles. La micro-analyse à l’expérience,
ed. Jacques Revel (Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil, 1996), 44. While participants are undoubtedly influenced by context, they also contribute to the constitution of collective identities and the elaboration of categories. Before revealing the context (i.e., what we know
in addition to the text), it is therefore necessary to “let the actors act.” Bruno Latour
writes: “Instead of adopting a reasonable position and assigning a definite order in
advance, the sociologist of the actor-network aims to be able to find order after leaving
the actors to play out the range of controversies they are confronted with ... In other
words, the task of defining and ordering the social must be left to the actors themselves
rather than monopolized by the researcher.” Bruno Latour, Changer de société, refaire de
la sociologie (Paris: Éditions de la Découverte, 2006), 36.
27. For an overview of the Marche in the Middle Ages, see Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur,
“Comuni e signorie in Umbria, Marche e Lazio,” in Storia d’Italia, ed. Giuseppe Galasso
(Turin: Utet, 1987), 7:321-606. For a concise summary of the political context in this
region at the beginning of the fourteenth century, see Lett, Un procès de canonisation, 6973, and especially the bibliography referred to in the notes. On the numerous conflicts
between the communes, see: Joachim-Felix Leonhard, Ancona nel Basso medioevo. La
politica estera e commerciale dalla prima crociata al secolo XV (Bologne: Il Lavoro Ed., 1983;
repr. 1992), 165-72; Alberto Meriggi, Incastellamento, espansione e conflitti in comune della
Marca Anconetana nel Basso Medioevo (Tolentino: Edizioni Pezzoti, 1985); and Villani,
Signori e comuni.
28. Concerning Camerino, see Camillo Lili, Dell’Historia di Camerino (con supplementi di
F. Camerini) (Camerino, 1649; repr. 1885). Concerning the Varanos, see Pier Luigi Falaschi,
“Berardo I da Varano signore di Camerino,” in Camerino e il suo territorio fino al tramonto
della Signoria, Atti del XVIII convegno di studi maceratesi (Camerino, 13 au 14 novembre
1982) (Macerata: Centro di studi storici maceratesi, 1983), 15-76.
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communes were supposedly Ghibelline in 1306, but only Fabriano actually belonged
to this tradition (in 1306, the podesta was from the Labro family from Viterbe,
a city that had long been anti-Guelph),29 because San Severino and especially
Matelica had a reputation for being Guelph in the decades preceding the treaty.30
War again broke out after only a few years of peace (1294-1304).31 In 1304, the
Matelicans took up the attack, seeking to extend their control over the neighboring
castrum of San Anatolia (today Esanatoglia), which was under the influence of the
Varanos. According to papal documents, they burned houses in the region, destroyed
vineyards, and killed many people. In retaliation, the inhabitants of Camerino laid
siege to Matelica. After 1305, the conflict intensified as the three communes of
Fabriano, San Severino, and Matelica created the Ghibelline league, later called
Liga Comunantiarum. They chose the Count Speranza da Montefeltro as their captain, and many other communes followed in their wake. With the help of Pisan
and Aretini reinforcements, the Liga Comunantiarum attacked the villages of the
Marche under the control of the Malatestas, head of the Guelph party.32 This local
war was paralleled by another conflict: Fermo, another important Ghibelline city
of the region, declared war against San Ginesio, a castrum allied with Camerino.
29. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, “Nello Stato della chiesa: da una pluralità di circuiti al
trionfo del guelfismo,” in I podestà dell’Italia comunale, vol. 1, Reclutamento e circolazione
degli ufficiali forestieri (fine XII sec.-metà XIV sec.), ed. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, (Rome:
École française de Rome, 2000), 2:790-91, note 83.
30. Concerning San Severino, see Raoul Paciaroni and Oreste Ruggeri, San Severino
Marche. Contributi per una storia da rifare (Quaderni di Miscellanea Settempedana)
(San Severino Marche: Bellabarba Editori, 1981). Concerning Fabriano, see Francesco
Pirani, Fabriano in età comunale. Nascita e affermazione di una città manifatturiera (Florence:
Nardini, 2003), 54-62 (for discussion of the territorial expansion of the commune at the
end of the thirteenth century). Concerning Matelica, see Maria Paola Simonetti, Matelica
aurea. La storia di Matelica in età medievale (Matelica: Geronimo, 2003). The reputation
of Matelica as Guelph did not prevent the commune experiencing “Ghibelline” periods.
See Simonetti, Matelica aurea, 84-88. It is important to remember that during this period,
Guelph referred to communes that supported the alliance between Anjou and Florence
and its hegemony, and Ghibelline referred to the communes that challenged this
hegemony. See Sergio Raveggi, “Da Federico II a Carlo d’Angiò: l’Italia dei guelfi e dei
ghibellini,” Storia della società italiana 6 (1986): 255-79. However, the conflicts between
communes only partially cover the opposition between Guelphs and Ghibellines, as the
example dealt with here reveals. These “labels” are above all a pretext for the local elites
to extend their dominium over a given territory in order to consolidate the possession of
urban seigniory. As François Menant writes, “These two terms have become referents
of identity that no longer really connote any type of government in Italy but which are
transmitted from one generation to another, setting apart a particular town, family (or
part of a family) or a political party within a town.” François Menant, L’Italie des communes
(1100-1350) (Paris: Belin, 2005), 98.
31. Simonetti, Matelica aurea, 76-77.
32. See Virginio Villani, “Origine e sviluppo delle autonomie comunali marchigiane,”
in Istituzioni e statuti comunali nella Marca d’Ancona. Dalle origini alla maturità (secoli XIXIV), I, Il quadro generale, ed. Virginio Villani (Ancona: Consiglio regionale delle Marche,
2005), 41-227.
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Matelica sent troops to help Fermo, thereby disobeying the rector of the Marche
who had called for all communes in the region to refuse aide.33 On August 18,
1305, Berardo de Varano, then podesta of San Ginesio, received a letter of thanks
from Pope Clement V, applauding him for having so aptly defended papal interests
in the region and promising (as seen above) the immediate dispatch of two papal
legates. These two legates brought together the parliament in Montolmo and produced the text of the Concordia studied here, as well as that between Fermo and
San Ginesio.34 In Avignon in April 1306, they affirmed that after long negotiations,
the captain of the Liga and most of the “rebel” communes had signed the peace
treaties and sworn obedience to the Church.35 In actual fact, many communes did
not sign, and, except for periodic truces and changes in alliance, the war between
the communes continued after the legates’ departure and up until at least 1320.
Days after the treaty was signed, the inhabitants of Camerino attempted to appeal
to the rector and later sent envoys to France to complain to the Pope about this
treaty. Thus, in spite of the clause that was intended to avoid conflicts relating to
the delimitations of territories, Camerino refused to recognize that the castrum of
Santa-Maria in Monte belonged to Matelica and undoubtedly kept this castle in
its own jurisdiction during the following years against the recommendations of the
papal legates.36 In 1318, a truce suspending hostilities “for fifty years” was signed
between Matelica and Camerino. This concordia was thus a brutal failure for the
Papacy, as were nearly all the decisions made by the Montolmo parliament in 1306.
This leads to the final element of the context, that of papal policy in the region
during the years that preceded the promulgation of the concordia.
In order to better control the communes in the Marche region, Pope
Boniface VIII (1294-1303), like his immediate predecessors, generously granted
the merum et mixtum imperium (the delegation of power allowing the communes a
464
33. As a result, in 1305, the rector of the Marche required Matelica to pay a fine of
5,000 silver marks and reimburse damages. The inhabitants of Matelica appealed this
decision, arguing that they had sought, on the one hand, to help the nobles of Fano
(then enemies of Fermo)—who were oppressed by Pandolfo Malatesta—and, on the
other hand, to give the town its freedom. They were sentenced on December 9, 1305.
See Acquacotta, Lapidi e documenti, vol. 2, nos. 97 and 98, pp. 174-78.
34. Lodovico Zdekaurer, Gli atti del Parlamento di Montolmo del 15 gennaio 1306 (Rome:
Tipografia della R. Academia dei Linai, 1915); Lodovico Zdekaurer, “Magistrature e
Consigli nei comuni marchigiani agli inizi del Trecento,” Atti e Memorie della Deputazione
di storia patria per le Marche, 3-2 (1916-1917): 221-44; Cecchi, Il Parlamento e la Congregazione; and Francesco Pirani, “Bonifacio VIII e la Marca di Ancona,” Bullettino dell’Istituto
storico italiano per il Medio Evo 112 (2010): 382-87. This article can be consulted on the
Reti Medievali website: http://fermi.univr.it/rm/biblioteca/saaffale/p.htm#FrancescoPirani.
35. In this account made to the Pope, the legates also indirectly recognized incidents
of frequent abuse perpetrated by provincial public servants of the Marche region. This
account was published by Robert Davidsohn, “Rubrica de statu Marchie,” in Forschungen
zur älteren Geschichte von Florenz (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1896-1908), 3:294-95.
36. Acquacotta, Lapidi e documenti, vol. 2, no. 101 (dated March 29, 1306); see also Lili,
Dell’Historia di Camerino, 64 onward.
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great deal of autonomy in matters of criminal and civil justice), attempted to favor
the small centers rather than the larger ones, and above all promulgated the papal
bull Celestis patris familias in Anagni on September 6, 1303.37 Paragraph 6 of this
text denounces the abuse, intimidation, and threats by provincial rectors and their
officers against the inhabitants of the communes in the Marche, who in turn
appealed to the papal court.38 To curb this problem, the pope threatened them with
excommunication. The bull was thus copied and often conserved in the archives of
the communes of the Marche region. However, in January 1304, the recently
elected Pope Benedict XI (October 1303-1304), under pressure from the cardinals,
repealed the Celestis with the bull In supreme dignitatis.39 This decision reinforced
the emergence of oppositions against the Papacy in Avignon. The Montolmo parliament was thus convened to discuss the annulment of this bull, and it appears
that during the January 19 session, the legates were constrained to reintroduce the
Celestis constitution. Along with the relative failure of all the legates’ interventions
in 1306, the failure of the peace treaty between the four communes is without
a doubt imputable to the confrontation between two political and ideological
systems—communal and papal40—forming the backdrop against which a gender
regime developed.
Peace Between Communes, Households, and Sons
In all the instructions laid out in this document, women are only mentioned in the
clause concerning intermarriages, which is significant in itself. For the papal legates
and the male elites of the communes, women were called upon as future wives and
mothers, female functions that were likely to play a role in the affirmation and propagation of values dealing with peace, harmony, and friendship within the family.
37. Text published by Theiner, Codex diplomaticus dominii temporalis Sanctae Sedis. Recueil
de documents pour servir à l’histoire du gouvernement temporel des États du Saint-Siège. Extraits
des Archives du Vatican (Rome: Impr. du Vatican, 1861), vol. 1, doc. DLXXI, pp. 391-95.
See Pirani, “Bonifacio VIII e la Marca di Ancona,” 373-75.
38. This occurred during a time of increasing appeals to local priests (for Matelica, see
the acts cited in notes 10 and 11). For the activity of the provincial curia in the March
of Ancona at the very end of the thirteenth century, see Thérèse Boespflug Montecchi,
“Montolmo e la curia rettorale negli ultimi decenni del secolo XIII,” Studi maceratesi
25 (1989): 101-16.
39. Text published by Theiner, Codex diplomaticus, doc. DLXXVII, 398.
40. Sandro Carocci has argued for the increasing divide during the Trecento between
the demand for greater autonomy on the part of the communes of the Papal States
and the Pope’s policy to adopt a more intransigent program affirming his pre-eminence.
See Sandro Carocci, “Regimi signorili, statuti cittadini e governo papal nello Stato della
Chiesa (XIV e XV secolo),” in Signori, regimi signorili e statuti nel tardo Medioevo, eds.
Rolando Dondarini et al. (Bologne: Pàtron, 2003), 245-69. See also Sandro Carocci,
Vassalli del papa. Potere pontificio, aristocrazie e città nello Stato della Chiesa (XII-XV sec.)
(Rome: Viella, 2010), 161-91.
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Mixed Marriages and Household Peace
Marriage often occupied a central role in the various forms of reconciliation between
States. The marriage rite had to signify reconciliation between parties, and the
exchange of a woman played an “appeasing” role by creating new relationships
between groups, who henceforth shared similar interests.41 This provides one reason why “the rite of the shared bed,” in which the leaders of the two parties share
a bed (often after having dined together), frequently figured in peace rituals as a
strong gesture of reconciliation.42 In Italian society at the end of the Middle Ages,
conflict was the normal state of affairs, and each commune had numerous ways of
resolving it, whether it was internal to the community or involved neighboring
communes.43 The resolution of conflicts between rival factions within a given city
was frequently recognized by one or several marriages. The resolution of this intercommunal discord followed the same logic.44 However, in 1306, these intermarriages
went one step further than a simple peace treaty between states accompanied by
a royal wedding or between communes leading to one or two weddings between
elite families. Here, there was an interlacing of equivalent unions that were meant
to bring about equality and harmony. The exceptional nature of this treaty was
essentially due to the number of unions involved. By multiplying the number
of inter-communal brothers- and sisters-in-law, these 140 unions along with the
“organic fusion” to which they aspired, aimed to make brothers of all the residents
of these communities.
In the context of medieval Christendom, brotherhood, imposed by the need
for peace, took on a spiritual sense because the community of Christians was
considered a group of brothers. Any internal conflict between Christians was therefore fratricidal. The Pope, princeps pacis, was responsible for restoring the spiritual
fraternity linking Christians. In the City of God, Saint Augustine writes, “God,
desiring not only that the human race might be able by their similarity of nature
to associate with one another, but also that they might be bound together in harmony and peace by the ties of relationship, was pleased to derive all men from
466
41. On the theme of the woman as peacekeeper, see: Nicolas Offenstadt, “Les femmes
et la paix à la fin du Moyen Âge. Genre, discours, rites,” in Le règlement des conflits au
Moyen Âge, XXXIe Congrès de la SHMESP, Angers, juin 2000 (Paris: Publications de la
Sorbonne, 2001), 317-33; Offenstadt, Faire la paix, 112-27.
42. Offenstadt discusses this in Faire la paix, 223. This phenomenon is above all demonstrated by royal or princely marriages in sixteenth-century France. See Sheila Ffolliott,
“Make Love, Not War: Imaging Peace through Marriage in Renaissance France,” in
Peace and Negotiation: Strategies for Coexistence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed.
Diane Wolfthal (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 213-31.
43. Recent studies on this subject are numerous. Amongst them, see: Jean-Claude
Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens. Guerre, conflits et société dans l’Italie communale, XIIeXIIIe siècles (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 2003); Andrea Zorzi, ed., Conflitti, paci e vendette
nell’Italia communale (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009).
44. Mario Sanfilippo, “Guelfi e ghibellini a Firenze: la ‘pace’ del cardinal Latino (1280),”
Nuova rivista storica 64 (1980): 22.
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one individual.”45 In these four communes, as in the City of God, this concordia
had to reestablish the rule of divine right. The most obvious signs of peace were
always visible as trade resumed. Peace lay in the establishment or re-establishment
of the free circulation of goods and persons along with the possibility of creating
connections between people.
Within this papal rhetoric, marriage represented a metaphor of peace. As
early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the first documents of peace or
allegiance between Italian communes, the key figures represented themselves as
spouses, with the emphasis on mutual aid (salvare adiuvare) and fidelity (fidelitas).46
In 1306, in Camerino, Fabriano, San Severino, and Matelica, the newlyweds united
by the bonds of marriage had to commit to peace through the exchange of a kiss
of peace, just like the ambassadors from each commune who came to Macerata
to sign the concordia. Like all the adult male inhabitants of the four communes,
they promised mutual fides by swearing an oath to the Church. Words exchanged
between members of the former enemy communes promised love, peace, and loyalty
in addition to echoing the words uttered during the signing of the treaty, which
aimed to erase past declarations of hatred and discord. The addition of 140 indissoluble matrimonial unions was intended to ensure perpetual peace. In the symbolic
(and only in the symbolic) order of things, marriage represented the conjunction
of two apparently opposing elements, the union of which was intended to ensure
harmony.47 The love between men and women within these unions was meant to
guarantee and defend peace, thereby setting the treaty in stone.
The wide range of social conditions represented by the participants was
meant to render the achievement of this harmony all the more successful. The
clause stipulated that the women must be from different social backgrounds (de
majoribus, mediocribus et inferioribus), as they were supposed to represent the whole
social body (even though the key figures behind the treaty issued from the elites
of the communes). It is noteworthy that nothing is said of the future husbands’
social status, as the largely homogamous matrimonial practices implied that their
status would be in accordance with that of their betrothed. The addition of both
sexes and all social conditions was meant to strengthen the promise of peace.48
45. Saint Augustine, The City of God, 14.1.
46. See Enrica Salvatori, “I Giuramenti collettivi di pace e alleanza nell’Italia communal,” in Legislazione e prassi istituzionale nell’Europa medievale. Tradizioni normative, ordinamenti, circolazione mercantile (secoli XI-XV), ed. Gabriella Rossetti (Naples: Liguori,
2001), 141-57.
47. Ffolliott, “Make Love,” 215.
48. Enrica Salvatori also commented on this regarding the peace treaties of northern
Italy between the second half of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eigtheenth century: “In tutte è evidente l’esigenza di cercare un consenso alla pace allargato
e concreto, di assicurare l’adesione al patto da parte di una porzione ragguardevole, per
numero e qualità, della popolazione.” Salvatori, “I Giuramenti collettivi di pace,” 149.
467
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The Friend’s Child
The objective of a peace treaty is also to “ritually construct the future,”49 not only
the near future in which these marriages would be celebrated, but also the longterm future in which children would be born of these unions. The text of the concordia
also takes a number of ostensibly exceptional measures to produce peaceful future
generations. Indeed, one of the clauses specifies, upon penalty of a one-hundredpound fine, that each testator pass on the instructions of the treaty to their heirs:
“For the safekeeping of the peace, harmony, and friendship, we wish, order,
declare, decide, prescribe, and mandate, upon pain of the aforementioned punishment, all persons of the said city of Camerino and the lands of San Severino,
Fabriano, and Matelica who make a last will and testament are required in said
testament to lay out the obligation for his heirs [to respect] the peace, concord,
and friendship, and to ask them to perpetually observe the present dispositions.”
In a papal letter dated December 29, 1303 condemning war and discord and seeking
to impose peace, there is a phrase that perfectly summarizes the above clause. It
attests even more to the fact that the exceptional nature of this clause is largely
due to papal rhetoric. It reads: “There can be no tranquility among the fathers if
there is dissension between the sons.”50
The “public” peace, established by men—since it was they who had started
the previous war—had to be introduced into the “private” sphere of the family by
women. Just as, in 1306, it had to be shared between a man and a woman of the
same generation by marriage, it also had to be affirmed by future generations.
Present and future had to come together in order to forget the past.51 As wives
and mothers, women were the principal agents when it came to relations across
time, helping to diffuse peace within families. The extent to which the wars of
the twentieth century revolutionized gender relations and sexual violence is well
known. During wartime, women may be raped by the men who invade or occupy
their country because they represent and embody the nation to be vanquished and
must be inseminated so that they then carry “the enemy’s child”52 in shame. In
468
49. Offenstadt, Faire la paix, 226.
50. “Non enim patris animus potest adherere quieti, cuius mentem turbat et concutit
dissentio filiorum.” Theiner, Codex diplomaticus, vol. 1, doc. DLXXVI, p. 397.
51. As early as 1889, Georges Espinas wrote: “Peace, the end and appeasement of
disagreement, annulling the past, forever guarantees the future and removes any pretext
for the renewal of war.” Georges Espinas, “Les guerres familiales dans la commune de
Douai aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles : les trêves et les paix,” Revue historique de droit français
et étranger 23 (1899): 419-20.
52. For World War I, see: Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, L’enfant de l’ennemi, 1914-1918.
Viol, avortement, infanticide pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Aubier, 1995); Ruth Harris,
“The ‘Child of the Barbarian’: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First
World War,” Past and Present 141 (1993): 170-206. For World War II, see: Fabrice Virgili,
La France virile. Des femmes tondues à la Libération (Paris: Payot, 2000); Fabrice Virgili,
Naître ennemi. Les enfants de couples franco-allemands nés pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale
(Paris: Payot, 2009).
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the case studied here, it was peace that needed to be inseminated into the women’s
bodies: they were taken in marriage and needed to carry “the friend’s child.” They
became matrices for the propagation of peace, concord, and friendship. While in
war the enemy seeks to humiliate his adversary, in peace, the new friend—and
former enemy—seeks reconciliation. In both cases, these objectives are expressed
through physical or symbolic violence played out on women’s bodies.53 The concordia assigned and reminded the men of Camerino, Matelica, San Severino, and
Fabriano of their role in social reproduction and reminded the women of their
biological function. By maintaining their place within a gender regime known
and accepted by all, both parties were obliged to produce households (casae) that
reflected the city on a small scale, serving as units for the diffusion of peace and
solidifying communal power.
Inscribed in a framework encompassing multiple forms of domination—particularly, social and male—these gender relations cannot be isolated from the other
social interactions that produced or shaped them, as in the case of this extremely
detailed text. This explains why, in order to understand the construction of this
gender regime and of the relevance of this concept to the historical study of social
practices in general, it is necessary to conclude by situating the implementation
of this text within the context of communal practices. This leads to a better understanding of the proposed decisions, which were heavily ritualized, occurred in a
precise context, and reveal the spatial, economic, and juridical dimensions of the
strategies involved. Indeed, beyond what the text conveys metaphorically about
alliances, inheritance, and kinship, and close ties, all elements of family relations
stemming directly from stereotypical papal rhetoric, the organization of 140 intermarriages reveals the relations between the episcopal city and the three other terrae
or castra. It also reveals how both citizenship and the dowry system functioned in
the communes of the Marche at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
The Transfer of Wives, Dowries, and Citizenship
The Relationship Between Camerino and the Other Three Communes
Upon reading this clause, the mercantile nature of the exchange stands out. Like
war, peace is a business matter, particularly in Italy.54 Both are decided, orchestrated,
53. I examined this type of physical violence in my study of rape legislation in certain
communal statutes in the Marche region. See Didier Lett, “‘Connaître charnellement
une femme contre sa volonté et avec violence.’ Viols des femmes et honneur des
hommes dans les statuts communaux des Marches au XIVe siècle,” in Le Moyen Âge
aujourd’hui. Mélanges Claude Gauvard, eds. Julie Claustre et al. (Paris: Publications de la
Sorbonne, 2010), 447-59.
54. The mercenary function of war in fourteenth-century Italy was documented by
Mario Del Treppo, who demonstrated how all free companies functioned on the basis
of contracts and emphasized client relations. See Mario Del Treppo, “Gli aspetti organizzativi economici e sociali di una compagnia di ventura,” Rivista storica italiana 85
469
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and organized by the communal oligarchy, who are notable in terms of seniority
and an ability to fight in addition to (and sometimes especially because of) recent
wealth acquired through commerce and industry, professions in which counting is
important55: depending on the number of marriages to be organized, eight, six or
four probi homines were nominated, and a third of these unions had to take place
every two months. Knowing that neither forty, twenty nor ten are multiples of
three (a highly symbolic number), this third figured more as a unit of measure and
provided another indication that this clause was unlikely to be realized.
Why was the number of marriages variable? Should it be considered in relation to the number of inhabitants in each commune? The Descriptio Marchiae, a
document combining several lists written between 1320 and 1357 (the result of an
inventory by Cardinal Albornoz during his time as legate in the Marche from 1353
onward),56 can be used to measure this. For fiscal and legal purposes, this Descriptio
provides the number of hearths (fumate) in seventy-five areas (civitates and terrae).
For the most part, the figures cover the period between 1320 and 1330. According
to the number of hearths, the population of Camerino can be estimated to have
comprised about 15,000 inhabitants, that of Fabriano and San Severino around
10,000 each, and that of Matelica around 4,000. This demographic hierarchy therefore does not sufficiently explain the difference in intermarriages stipulated for
each commune. Might it then be due to geographical proximity? This seems to
be a more pertinent explanation. San Severino is situated ten miles from Camerino
(where eighty women were exchanged); Matelica is twelve miles away (forty
women) and Fabriano fifty miles away (twenty women). It seems that the further
away the commune was from the episcopal city, the fewer the number of women
to be exchanged. However, beyond the demographic and geographical aspects, it
is necessary to take into account an essential qualitative aspect in order to better
470
(1973): 253-75. For a more recent study with an extensive bibliography, see Paolo Grillo,
Cavalieri e popoli in armi. Le istituzioni militari nell’Italia medievale (Rome: Laterza,
2008).
55. For Fabriano, see: Giancarlo Castagnari, ed., La città della carta. Ambiente società cultura
nella storia di Fabriano (Fabriano: Città e Comune di Fabriano, 1986); Pirani, Fabriano
in età comunale.
56. See Emilia Saracco Previdi, ed., Descriptio Marchiae Anconitanae (sec. XIV) (Ancona:
Deputazione di storia patria per le Marche, 2000); revised version published in Emilia
Saracco Previdi, Descriptio Marchiae Anconitanae da Collectoriae 203 dell’Archivio Segreto
Vaticano (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2010). See
also Maria Ginatempo and Lucia Sandri, L’Italia delle città. Il popolamento urbano tra
Medioevo e Rinascimento (secoli XIII-XVI) (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990). Chapter 2 of the
second section of this book examines central Italy (Marche, Lazio, and Umbria); for
the sections covering the Marche (117-128), the authors use this Descriptio. See also
Francesco Bonasera, “La Città delle Marche elencate nelle ‘Constitutiones Aegidianae’
(1357). Contributo alla Geografia Storica delle Marche,” Studia Picena 27 (1959): 93-105.
Now out-of-date, this article has been updated by Philippe Jansen, “Les constitutions
égidiennes de 1357. L’idée du fait urbain et sa classification au Moyen Âge”, in Les
petites villes du Moyen Âge à nos jours, eds. Jean-Pierre Poussou and Philippe Loupès
(Paris: Éd. du CNRS, 1987), 15-28.
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interpret these differences: the nature of inter-communal relations in the years before
the treaty, trying to overcome the simple and not very useful opposition between
Guelphs and Ghibellines. The competition between Fabriano and Camerino was
by far the strongest—the former had always been a Ghibelline stronghold and the
latter Guelph—and further reinforced by the fact that, from the last decades of
the thirteenth century, Fabriano sought to expand and take control of its contado.57
Only twenty women were exchanged there. The tension between Camerino and
Matelica was equally strong at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the
fourteenth century, particularly concerning control over the castrum and the western
part of Esanatoglia, situated in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains.58 During
the decade preceding the concordia, the rectors of the Marche, representing the
Pope, managed to place friends or family members in the position of podesta of
Matelica. Guillaume Durand himself, one of the two legates in 1306, was podesta
of the quasi-città in 1296,59 which indicates his strong relations with the notables of
that commune at the time of the act in February 1306, when his uncle (of the
same name) was rector of the Marche and Romagna.60 From the beginning of
the fourteenth century, the podestas in place in Matelica were for the most part
recruited from Guelph towns.61 In 1306, although relations with the Varano family
in Camerino remained tense, Matelica was in the process of being “Guelphized.”
Forty women were exchanged there. Finally, it seems that despite joining the Liga
Comunantiarum in 1304, San Severino followed a Guelph tradition, and relations
with the Varanos’ city were less strained. It was only in 1325, however, that there
was a Camerino podesta in San Severino, Gentile Varano. Eighty women were
exchanged there. This makes it possible to affirm that, at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, the more cordial the relations between communal elites, the
greater the number of matrimonial unions proposed.
As a result, the range of figures does not refer to some symbolic order but
rather to a social “reality” that participants in the treaty (the papal legates and
communal elites) had to take into account. Specifically, this meant acknowledging
that the tensions between the inhabitants of Camerino and Fabriano were so
57. Pirani, Fabriano in età comunale, 54-62.
58. See the act of June 20, 1305 in Grimaldi, Archivio Storico Comunale di Matelica,
nos. 829 and 279.
59. The archives of Matelica contain an act in which Guillaume Durand and his paternal
uncle of the same name recognizes having received from the government administrator
of Matelica 225 pounds from Ravenna and Ancona as salary for the podesta for the year
1296, according to the statutory norms. Act listed by Grimaldi, Archivio Storico Comunale
di Matelica, nos. 679 and 254.
60. In 1298, the podesta was Davide Paparoni da Ferentino, vicar general of the Marche;
in 1301, it was Napoleone Orsini. See Acquacotta, Lapidi e documenti 1:349.
61. From May-June and then in November 1300, the podesta of Matelica was Signor
Nicolo di Martinello da San Sepolcro. See Giustiniano Degli Azzi, Gli Archivi della Storia
d’Italia, series II, vol. II (Rocca San Casciano: Licinio Capelli, 1911), 266-67 and 269.
In the 1320s, the podesta were generally from the Varano family: Rodolfo di Nuto di
Rodolfo in January 1321 and Gentile di Berardo in August 1323. See Gino Luzzato,
preamble to Gli statuti del comune di San Anatolia del 1324 (Ancona: 1909), 1.
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strong that they could not “reasonably” permit the exchange of more than twenty
marriages between these two communes. Indeed, the term “communes” denotes
an “oligarchy of communes,” and the number of women exchanged reflects above
all the quality of the connections between the elite families of each of these towns.
Although in the text it was necessary to show that the whole social body was
covered and engaged in the peace, the resolution of conflicts between communes
was above all a matter for the oligarchies.62 The apparent desire to regulate peace
or the need to accept the peace imposed by the papal legates does not obscure
the pragmatism involved. Affinities and connections between elite families continued to signify a preference for friendly families rather than those less worthy
of marriage—precisely those who ought to have been preferred by the concordia
according to the rhetoric of peace. This is perhaps another reason why these instructions were not respected.
Guaranteed Dowry Transfers
It is unnecessary to stress the importance of the dowry within the marriage union
in communal Italy at the end of the Middle Ages63: the significant inflation in
dowries at the end of the thirteenth century64 or the system of “exclusion for
dowry” indicated in nearly all of the statutes of the communes in the Marche attest
to this fact.65 At the beginning of the thirteenth century, normative and sumptuary
laws aiming to restrict dowries and control marriages, funerals, and excesses of
fashion were promulgated in order to avoid wasting wealth and to keep citizens’
assets within the commune.66 Even though men spent more money on clothing
472
62. See Pierre Monnet, “Élites et conflits urbains dans les villes allemandes de la fin
du Moyen Âge,” Cahiers d’Histoire, special issue “Élites et conflits” 45-4 (2001): 533-61,
and republished in Pierre Monnet, Villes d’Allemagne au Moyen Âge (Paris: Picard, 2004):
151-71.
63. Amongst the plethora of work dealing with communal Italy (though there is very
little focus on the Marche), see: Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Le Complexe de Griselda.
Dot et dons de mariage au Quattrocento,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome, Moyen
Âge-Temps modernes 94-1 (1982): 7-43, and republished in Christiane Klapisch-Zuber,
La maison et le nom. Stratégies et rituels dans l’Italie de la Renaissance (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS,
1990), 185-213; Angela Groppi and Agnès Fine, eds., special issue “Femmes, dot et
patrimoine,” Clio. Histoire, femmes et sociétés, 7 (1998); and the recent synthesis by Isabelle
Chabot, La dette des familles. Femmes, lignage et patrimoine à Florence aux XIVe et XVe siècles
(Rome: École française de Rome, 2011).
64. Dante’s expression is well known here and contemporaneous with our document:
“Non faceva, nascendo, ancor paura / la figlia al padre, ché’l tempo e la dote / non
fuggien quinci e quindi la misura.” (“The birth of a daughter did not yet dismay fathers
since dowry and bride’s age were fitting, the one not too high the other not too low.”).
Dante, The Divine Comedy: Paradisio, XV:103-5.
65. Worth mentioning here is the title of Section XCII of the Capitulum maleficiorum of
the Esanatoglia statutes (1324), according to Luzzato: “Quod mulier quae fuerit dotata
a patre vel alio consanguineo non possit ulterius petere partem de bonis patris.” Luzzato,
Gli statuti del comune di San Anatolia, 79.
66. There are many examples in the statutes of areas near Esanatoglia: see sections IIC,
CLXV, and CLXXXXVI of the Capitulum maleficiorum. Ibid., 81, 106, and 118.
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and fashion than women, female dress (veils, embroidery, gold, silver, etc.) was
specifically targeted in the communal statutes. In Renaissance Florence, not only
did most of the sumptuary laws affect women, but, when they did concern men,
they appeared under the title ornementa mulierum. Women were targeted more
frequently because legislators often equated the luxury of female garments with
economic instability, the decline of marriages, and the decrease in fertility rates.
Indeed, the communal authorities who created these statutes feared a demographic
downturn. The sumptuary laws of Lucca in 1380 explained, for example, that there
were many young marriageable women available and many young men wishing to
marry them. However, the former could not raise sufficient dowries, and the latter
could not afford to spend what was required for the wedding day.67
The dowry was at the heart of matrimonial transactions. No marriage was
possible without one, as observed in the 1306 document. In order to be certain
that each of the 140 wives would have a dowry worthy of her social status, probi
homines were chosen from each commune in proportional number to that of the
unions to be carried out. In arranging these marriages these men were to act as
intermediaries between the families, a role that was sometimes institutionalized.
In parts of Flanders and Brabant in the mid-thirteenth century, for example, a
specific jurisdiction known as the Paiseurs—probably stemming from the local
magistrates—was responsible for establishing peace between families.68 In Italy,
these negotiators also served as mediators, establishing peace or a marriage between
families or neighboring towns. Immediately after the reconciliation between the
Lucchese and the Pisans in 1342, the statutes of Lucca encouraged marriage
between the inhabitants of both cities. To enable this, the Anziani were therefore
asked twice a year to elect a commission of five men to arrange these unions.
These negotiators were exempt from taxes and provided with a “present” of up
to 25 pounds by the Anziani.69 Public offices of this nature (pacificatores, pacerii,
regulatores) were found in many statutes of the communes in the Marche.70
In order to allow the probi homines and the heads of household time to negotiate
and publish the banns, the marriages were to take place in thirds every two months.
The marriage negotiators had to ensure that the women were well endowed “in
land assets,” which were essential in the communes of the Marche and a fundamental element of any dowry. They were also entitled to act in place of fathers who
were either too poor or too reluctant to provide their daughters with a dowry. This
mission was conferred on them because under “normal” circumstances, especially
during this period of demographic tension, the communes balked at relinquishing
67. Cited by Catherine Kovesi-Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200-1500 (New York:
Clarendon Press, 2002), 51.
68. Espinas, “Les guerres familiales,” 423.
69. Archivio di Stato di Lucca, statuti, 5, book II, chap. 5, cited by Cédric Quertieri, “Le
devenir des étrangers. Prospective pour une histoire totale des forestieri à Lucques au
XIVe siècle,” (mémoire de master I, Université de Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2008),
130-31.
70. See the many examples in Cecchi, “Sull’istituto della pax,” 118-21.
473
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their young women to marry foreigners. The vast majority of communal statutes
for this region (as in other regions of northeastern Italy) forbade high-status women
from marrying foreigners. Thus, the women of Apiro (a commune situated roughly
eighteen miles from Matelica and to the west of Cingoli) who possessed assets of
a value superior to 200 pounds could not marry a foreigner unless he adopted the
citizenship of Apiro, at the risk of having the assets exceeding this limit confiscated.71 Under “normal” circumstances, these wealthy families had to adopt strategies to bypass these laws. Either they tried to persuade the future husband to live
in his wife’s commune, although such matrilocal marriages were probably rare,72
or (more frequently) they adopted patrilocality over a short distance, leading to
(geographically) endogamous marriages within the same città or terra.73
Indeed, the risk for any commune was to see its young women leave with
an overly substantial dowry and thus dilapidate the wealth of the commune, which
thereby became untaxable. It is worth recalling that the clause of the concordia
specified “women ... of diverse social conditions.” This detail was no doubt intended
for the elites of communal society so that they too participated in these exchanges.
It is possible to surmise that women of lower and poorer status would have less
difficulty marrying foreigners if they could be endowed. If their parents were too
poor, the probi homines had a mandate to compensate for such a shortcoming.
The 1306 clause liberated men and women of the elite from the restrictions
inherent in the protection of inheritance and guaranteed marriage with poor families who would not have been able to provide a dowry. It also allowed men and
women to establish a union that might have been prevented by war or which might
nonetheless have taken place in secret.
474
71. Dante Cecchi, ed., Gli statuti di Apiro dell’anno 1388 (Milan: Giuffrè, 1984), book III,
XI, p. 124. As the communal legislator had to respect the principle according to which
libera debent esse matrimonia, another solution consisted in taxing the dowries of women
who married foreigners (in cases in which it was impossible to prevent the union). In
1264, the Venice statutes stipulated that the dowries of women who married foreigners
were to be partly directed to the commune, with the husband keeping only 200 pounds.
See Statuti di Vicenza. Monumenti storici della Deputazione Veneta di Storia patria (Venise:
1886), 1.140, and cited by Anna Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale. Citoyennes et
citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2001), 154, note 51.
72. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber suggests that matrilocal marriages were considered
dishonorable for the families of the Florentine or Bolognese elite. See Christiane
Klapisch-Zuber, “La vie domestique et ses conflits chez un maçon bolonais du XVe siècle,”
in Le petit peuple dans l’Occident médiéval. Terminologies, perceptions, réalités, eds. Pierre
Boglioni et al. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), 489.
73. See Didier Lett, “Liens adelphiques et endogamie géographique dans les Marches
de la première moitié du XIVe siècle,” special issue “Frères et sœurs. Ethnographie
d’un lien de parenté,” Médiévales 54 (2008): 53-68.
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Woman as a Vector of Citizenship74
During the last decades of the medieval period in Italy, the right to citizenship
varied from commune to commune (Civitas sibi faciat civem).75 However, under
“normal” circumstances the dominant conception of citizenship was derived from
Roman law. Legitimate children acquired not the citizenship of their birthplace
but that of their father’s place of origin (origo). Citizenship was thus transferred
through the male line. The mother could only transmit citizenship to her children
born out of wedlock. It is also known that in the mid-thirteenth century, citizenship
(which involved financial advantages) became increasingly difficult to obtain
because the communal authorities feared the demographic consequences of the
inurbamento. In all the communal statutes of the region, “foreigners are always
considered suspicious.”76 For the same crime they would often pay a fine that was
twice that of a citizen, and they were subject to numerous prohibitions. They could
not acquire furnished assets (nor often unfurnished assets) and could not buy or
sell land. As has been mentioned, they were forbidden from marrying a woman of
the commune, especially if the latter possessed assets of a certain value. Similarly,
heavy fines were imposed on citizens who abandoned their commune or sold their
74. There are many studies of Italian medieval citizenship (cittadinanza). For example,
see: the seminal article by Dina Bizzarri “Ricerce sul diritto di cittadinanza nella costituzione comunale,” Studi senesi (1916): 19-136, and reprinted in Dina Bizzarri, Studi di
storia del diritto italiano (Turin: S. Lattes, 1937), 61-158; Pietro Costa, Civitas, storia della
cittadinanza in Europa, vol. 1, Dalla civiltà communale al settecento (Rome: Laterza, 1999),
3-50; Pietro Costa, “The Discourse of Citizenship in Europe: A Tentative Explanation,”
in Privileges and Rights of Citizenship: Law and the Juridical Construction of Civil Society,
eds. Julius Kirshner and Laurent Mayali (Berkeley: Robbins Collection Publications,
2002), 199-225; and Ennio Cortese, “Cittadinanza – diritto romano e diritto intermedio,”
in Enciclopedia del diritto (Varèse: Giuffrè, 1960), 7:127-40. On the theme of gender and
citizenship, see: Julius Kirshner “Genere e cittadinanza nelle città-stato del Medioevo
e del Rinascimento,” in Innesti. Donne e genere nella storia sociale, ed. Giulia Clavi (Rome:
Viella, 2004), 28-35; and Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale.
75. Julius Kirshner “‘Civitas sibi faciat civem’: Bartolus of Sassoferrato’s Doctrine on
the Making of a Citizen,” Speculum 48 (1973): 694-713.
76. Dante Cecchi, “Sugli statuti comunali (secoli XV-XVI) di Jesi, Senigallia, di alcune
‘terrae et castra’: Filottrano, Montemarciano, Ostra, Ostra Vetere,” in Nelle Marche centrali. Territorio, economia, societa tra Medioevo e Novecento: l’area esino-misena, ed. Sergio
Anselmi (Jesi: Cassa di Risparmio, 1979), 550. On the status of foreigners, see L’étranger
au Moyen Âge, XXXe Congrès de la SHMESP, Göttingen, June 1999 (Paris: Publications de la
Sorbonne, 2000). On Italy, see Mario Ascheri, “Lo straniero nella legislazione statutaria
e nella letteratura giuridica del Tre-Quattrocento: un primo approccio,” in Forestieri e
stranieri nelle città basso-medievali, Atti del Seminario Internazionale di Studio Bagno, a Ripoli,
(Firenze), 4-8 giugno 1984 (Florence: Salimbeni, 1988), 7-18. On the Marche, see Dante
Cecchi, “Disposizioni statutarie sugli stranieri e sui forestieri,” in Stranieri e forestieri
nella Marca dei secc. XIV-XVI, Atti del XXX Convegno di studi maceratesi, Macerata, 1920 novembre 1994 (Macerata: Centro di studi storici maceratesi, 1996), 29-91.
475
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land to foreigners, particularly in times of war.77 Yet at the end of the clause relating
to marriage it states that “those who take a wife from the town of Camerino, will
be considered citizens of that city, and those who take a wife from the lands (terrae)
of Fabriano, San Severino, and Matelica, will be considered as castellani of the
lands whence their bride comes.” This highly unusual situation meant that, by
their marriage, these women transmitted the citizenship of their place of origin to
140 men, even if the latter made the (likely) decision not to reside there. Since
they did not lose their previous citizenship, they obtained double citizenship. This
extraordinary generosity on the part of the communes turns out to have been a
condition of their commitment to peace. It therefore contrasted with the general
tendency toward closure at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Immigration
policy was thus in flux. Referring to the immigration policy of Bologna, Antonio
Ivan Pini speaks of an “elastic demographic policy (politica demografica ad elastico),” as the communes sometimes encouraged and sometimes forbade access to
citizenship.78
What did it mean then for these 140 men to be “citizen[s]” of a formerly
enemy commune? In fact, this term regroups not one but several different ranks
of status among city residents.79 It is important to take rank into account. In the
concordia, for example, two different terms, cives and castellani, are used. For many,
and in particular for people from the contado, it could take a long time to acquire
full citizenship (pleno jure or optimo jure). Some might be citizens but not residents;
others might only be residents (often temporarily), such as recently arrived foreigners not yet entitled to citizenship.80 In the absence of further information, the
future husbands can be considered to have been accorded full citizenship (pleno
jure), both legal (allowing the payment of taxes and access to certain professions)
as well as political (which granted the right to elect representatives). In his definition of a citizen, Marsile de Padoue, who wrote his Defensor pacis in 1324, recognized
the following hierarchy: “We call citizen ... he who participates, according to his
rank, in civil community, in government, and in deliberative and juridical duties.”81
476
77. See the many examples found in the statutes in the Marche in Dante Cecchi, Statuta
Castri Campirotundi (1322-1366): Proprietà fondiaria ed agricultura negli statuti della Marca
di Ancona (Milan: Giuffrè, 1966), 50-52, note 33.
78. Antonio Ivan Pini, “La politica demografica ‘ad elastico’ di Bologna fra il XII e il
XIV secolo” in Città medievali e demografia storica. Bologna, Romagna, Italia (secc. XIIIXV) (Bologne: CLUEB, 1996), 105-47.
79. Costa emphasized this: “Non vi è una cittadinanza, ma una pluralità di condizioni
soggettive differenziate e gerarchizzate. La cittadinanza non è uno status uniforme: i
suoi contenuti sono determinati da parametri volta a volta diversi che danno luogo a
complicate tipologie: cittadini originari o acquisiti, cives ex privilegio o de gratia, cittadini
di antica o recente immigrazione; ancora: cittadini che abitano prevalentemente in città
o cittadini residenti per lungo tempo fuori città, e allora dotati di minore tutela.” Costa,
Civitas, storia, 15.
80. Dante Cecchi pointed out that there is a difference between civis and habitator in the
Marche: “Si noti la differenza tra il civis e l’habitator: quest’ultimo è a volte trattato come
il cittadino, anche se non è cittadino pleno jure.” Cecchi, Statuta Castri Campirotundi, 55.
81. Marsilius of Padua, Il difensor della pace (Turin: Utet, 1975),174, and cited by Costa,
Civitas, storia della cittadinanza, 27.
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Also considered a citizen was the son or descendent of a citizen who paid the onera
realia et personalia to the commune, paid the dative and collecte taxes, participated
in the civilian militia, received specific exemptions, and possessed an individual
house and a small plot of land. The citizen could make a summons to the local
court, was protected against attacks from outside, could enroll in the Arti, and was
also allowed to participate in political life.82
What about the 140 women married by the concordia? As vectors of citizenship
for men, were they themselves considered citizens? This question raises the complex
issue of female citizenship. Legally speaking and according to the principle by
which the marriage “transforms the origin of the women into that of the husband”
(as indicated in the texts of Bartolus de Sassoferrato or Baldus),83 a woman who
married a citizen of another city lost her original citizenship and gained that of her
husband. The Glossa ordinaria of Accursius stipulated that a woman married to a
foreigner became a citizen of her husband’s origo while simultaneously ceasing to
be a citizen of her city of birth.84 As observed earlier, a man was able to keep his
citizenship if he married elsewhere. At the beginning of the fourteenth century,
dual citizenship was indeed a male privilege. For medieval-law specialists, the reason
for this inequality is simple: a wife was under her husband’s control, and the
association they formed through marriage meant that they no longer constituted
two separate legal persons but rather a single legal person.85 It was customary for
the woman to live under her husband’s roof upon marriage (according to the rule
of mulier sequitur forum viri). In the rare cases in which the man went to reside in
his new wife’s commune, the woman kept her original citizenship.
As soon as one admits that citizenship may be defined not only by the possibility of holding political rights but also by belonging to a community of free individuals, then women are citizens. They are recognized as subjects in law and may
82. Bizzarri, “Ricerce sul diritto,” 67-68.
83. Bartolus de Sassoferrato, commentary of Transfundit originem uxoris in originem viri,
in Digeste, 50, I, 38, and cited by Patrick Gilli, “Comment cesser d’être étranger. Citoyens
et non-citoyens dans la pensée juridique italienne de la fin du Moyen Âge,” in L’étranger
au Moyen Âge, XXXe Congrès de la SHMESP, Göttingen, June 1999 (Paris: Publications de la
Sorbonne, 2000), 59, note 1. See also: Julius Kirshner, “Donne maritale altrove. Genere e
cittadinanza in Italia,” in Tempi e spazi di vita femminile tra medioevo ed età moderna, eds.
Silvana Seidel Menchi et al. (Bologne: Il Mulino, 1999): 377-429; Peter Riesenberg,
Citizenship in Western Tradition: Plato to Rousseau (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1992).
84. Glossa ordinaria a Cod. 10.40 (39), 7. According to Kirshner, this is an important
innovation because “the immutability of one’s personal origin was a sacred principle
under Roman law.” Kirshner, “Donne maritale altrove,” 379.
85. Bartolus of Sassoferrato (who died in 1357) criticized the doctrine of the Glossa.
While he indeed defended the principle of a single legal personage for married couples
and the superiority of the husband, he considered the woman’s loss of citizenship upon
marriage to a foreigner harmful. He proposed a clever compromise allowing for the
reconciliation of the Corpus juris and the Glossa: as a sign of submission to her husband,
the woman had to adopt his citizenship. However, she could nonetheless conserve her
rights as a citzen in the place she was born. Bartolus’s text quickly became a model for
jurists interested in the problem of marriage between people from different cities, but
it came after the Concordia studied here. See Kirshner, “Donne maritale altrove,” 384.
477
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DIDIER LETT
transmit their citizenship. However, whether single or dual, citizenship remains
for them “women’s citizenship”: a right to assistance, protection, and the possibility
of an economic activity but with no ability to vote or be elected to office under
any circumstances. The women of these Italian communes “swore no oaths, did
not participate in public life, did not intervene in meetings. They had no access
to the public spaces where the life of the community was decided.”86 Exclusively
for the men, “access to the female ‘body’ (in a physical sense) gave access to the
‘body’ (in a metaphorical sense) of citizens.”87 The intermarriages that the peace
treaty sought to impose thus reflected concrete social structures. Their enactment
was designed to regulate the exchange of dowries and citizenship by allowing the
free circulation of goods and persons on this one rare occasion.
The concordia of February 1306 failed to bring peace and realize any intermarriages.
Not one single woman from Fabriano, Matelica or San Severino ever left her paternal home with a dowry to marry a man from Camerino (or vice versa) and gain new
citizenship. The papal legates seem to have constructed a fantastical program of
alliances with little regard for the possibility of social application. The communal
elites never even bothered to thwart this unrealizable project or make it more
flexible. And yet, can it be argued that the text was without social impact? Its
influence undoubtedly lay in what it was able to negotiate, produce, and conserve.
It enabled papal power to reassert its presence by demonstrating an attachment
to both peace and the autonomy of the cities of the Marche. It also enabled communal elites to reaffirm their social dominance and allowed men to manifest their
power and control over women.
In this document and in this specific context, depending on one’s social level
and political situation within the commune, being a man meant negotiating peace,
participating in rituals of reconciliation, swearing allegiance (on the condition of
being over 18 years old and younger than 70), marrying a woman, and receiving
citizenship. Being a woman meant becoming a wife and mother, thereby ensuring
the transmission of assets, values, citizenship, and peace. In the concordia’s rhetoric
of peace, marriage served as the cornerstone for reconciliation, and women acted
as the principle vectors of peace by giving their dowry to a former enemy, contributing to the procreation of children in peace, and providing access to citizenship.
Women had to consolidate, complete, and prolong the peace. By their very bodies,
men required them to transform enemy into friend and to produce, both biologically and socially, men capable of defending the peace in the future.
The gender analysis crossed with a pragmatic procedure that I have proposed
here makes it possible to maintain a certain distance from a strictly culturalist
478
86. Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, L’aria di città. Donne e diritti nel comune medievale
(Naples: Esi, 1996), 19.
87. Anna Bellavitis, “Donne, cittadinanza e corporazioni tra Medioevo ed età moderna:
ricerche in corso”, in Corpi e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’età contemporanea,
eds. Nadia Maria Filippini et al. (Rome: Viella, 2002), 103.
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GENDER REGIMES
perspective. Instead, the concept of gender becomes an additional means by which
to read the social, taking care to articulate it in relation to other social categories
and to avoid any form of gender essentialism or determinism. Used in this way,
gender presents another way to elaborate the history of social differences. It is one
criterion of distinction among other types of socio-cultural relations. The heuristic
strength of gender also lies in its ability to demonstrate that the division of the
sexes is far from being the only one organizing social relations and attributing a
place in society to individuals. For the men and women of the communes in the
Marche, social status (some belonging to the “best families,” others to “middling”
or “inferior families”) and age (after 18 or before 70 years for men) were also fundamental variables. The gender regime studied here is truly the result of the encounter between a unique document, a specific context, and male-female relations.
While women’s sexual belonging constitutes a pertinent criterion of analysis with
which to renew social history, it is only one element among many in an identity
that is in perpetual flux.
Didier Lett
Université Denis-Diderot (Paris 7)
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Gender and Peace - Cambridge University Press

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